Marching Band Research Paper

Last year, our game was strong; the band obtained a rating of two at state finals in Brunswick, Ohio. It was marching season, not football season. With eight incredibly talented seniors on various instruments, our season was substantial and awe-inspiring. Those seniors took charge and impelled us to victory. Also, the music was an upper level composition wrote for experienced hands and mouths. The Shenandoah Marching Band only had four Jr. High members in its midsts: Cameron Kolbank, Lorrin Wiley, Corey Feldner, and Deanna Mick. Although, after losing so many seniors last marching season, the band has been forced to call upon eight Jr. High band members to engage at the high school level in the marching program. This year with the new additions,
When looking at the problem of new additions to the band you have to take it into account that a seventh and eighth grader does not have the experience or confidence of a high school player that has been in front of a stadium with 300 people sitting in it. Though, you have to get over the problem of the student not knowing the proper way to march at one of these nerve wracking competitions. If you start either earlier in the season or in the previous school year you will still have those underclassmen who can not seem to march properly with a full week of just marching or a whole two months of marching and concert band music. Both solutions would leave you with the same result, a scared marcher. The benefit of giving up a whole week to marching over taking it out of class time would be that these new additions would be marching with members who have marched for three or four years. This can be very critical when teaching a first year marcher because the experienced marcher can point out the problems, unlike a first year marcher. This would give the student more time that is needed in the class working on learning music, because if you took time out of the Jr. High’s class time then they would not be ready for the upper level music that is played in the high school
To cope with this, the single senior needs to step up and represent the band as a whole, not just as the percussion section, which he does. Strong student leadership is needed from all veteran members, not just the percussion section ( Stein, 2008). He needs to show that we are a family and not just separate sections trying to accomplish the same thing. Also, one person, preferably the most skilled in that section, could come forward and represent the band. The only problem with that though is that most sections only have Jr. High members in them, like the saxophone section. There would not be much leadership in that section because they are all first years. There needs to be trust within a section, that is a key aspect and helps with the learning ability of the Jr. High members of the band ( Mertz, 2015). The senior also only has three years in the band, so he may not be the leader when another member in that section has four years in band. The option of leaders of the section rising up and representing the whole band would be in the whole band's best interest. With multiple leaders, they can get together and figure out how to work together and accomplish something, unlike with just the one senior being the main